Providing food and drink for the
passengers was ever a part of paddle steamer operations although what was
provided and how it was done naturally varied according to the route and length
of journey. Short trips might have offered only a very limited fare, if in
some cases nothing at all, whilst longer ones, particularly those targeted
at a more wealthy clientele, would have provided substantial meals of a kind
that would not have been out of place at a country house party or in the
restaurants of the gradually developing network of sumptuous hotels which sprung
up around the country in the wake of the expanding railway network.

Here is a menu for a cruise on Cosens'
flagship, Majestic, on Saturday 18th
July 1914 to view a Grand Naval Pageant at which HM King George V and HRH The
Prince of Wales were advertised to be present. It is a pretty mouth
watering affair with so many different courses and tempting delights that it
makes one wonder how on earth they did it particularly given the very limited
and cramped galley facilities on the steamers.

One factor of course was that by no
means everybody aboard bought a proper lunch. For example, on paddle steamers
which could carry five or six hundred passengers the dining saloons could rarely
seat more than eighty which, even if there were three sittings, could only
satisfy two hundred and forty or so hungry diners. But even that is quite a lot.
Cooking for two hundred and forty needs a lot of cooking.

To ease the burden, a lot of the
preparation could have been done in advance with only modest things left to do
later like heat it all up just
before serving. And the clue to coping with this particular Majestic menu
is in the heading at
the top. The words stand out in red:Cold
Luncheon. So although there was a lot of cooking to prepare this substantial meal, not a lot
needed to be done there and then.
The delicious salmon and
cucumber, lobster salad, chicken, ham and tongue, roast beef, roast lamb with
mint sauce and pressed beef could all be prepared earlier with only the
potatoes, peas and coffee heated up later.

Note also that the coffee here is offered black. Doubtless
it was fashionable to drink coffee black in some quarters then as it is now but this was a fashion which must have suited Cosens
and other steamer operators.
Preventing fresh milk from going off below deck on long, warm, summer days, before the advent of
widespread refrigeration and with the galley often in close proximity to the
vessel's boiler and engine rooms, can't have been easy.

Many of the bigger companies had
catering departments ashore with extensive kitchens and stores where all the
real work was done. E P Leigh-Bennett recounts in "Red Funnel Stuff" in
1939 "I did more than you will ever do. I got behind the scenes of these
steamers. Watched the men at work for you, whom you never see, starting very
early on a busy morning. Saw them taking delivery of dozens of live lobsters,
black and actively viscious, to be boiled for steamer lunches that day. Saw
platoons of salmon, pink and grey perfections, and a white tiled kitchen where
silversides of Scotch beef were cooking in their own juice with a most
provocative smell; to be removed to a spotless cupboard in a courtyard (where a
canary sang in a trill of ecstasy about nothing in particular), there to cool
off alongside the forequarters of a Southdown lamb, in appetising propinquity to
boulders of cheese from Cheddar. Saw plum-tarts in long array, and cakes which
had been made with fresh eggs, and heard the chef' scorn at the mention of egg
powder ("the idea!"); learned that they paid eightpence a pound for their
butter for all those cakes, which the cake chef said loftily was " as it should
be." Came away - damned hungry- with the certain knowledge that I had never seen
a higher quality food production and preparation, and I have wasted men's time
in the kitchens of several plutocratic liners."

Mr Leigh-Bennet continued: "But why all
this care and quality? Is it appreciated?"

"Well, you see," his Red Funnel guide
replied "We have always had a big reputation for good food and drink aboard:
it's a forte of the fleet: and we are rather proud of our catering : we
do it all ourselves. Where do you want to go? Bournemouth? Ventnor? Cherbourg?
We have boats running to all these places."

"They have every right to be proud. An
enormous hamper of chicken arrived from a farm in Kent, and another of lettuces
from Romsey just as I was leaving: a pity."

The results of all that early morning
cooking are here being consumed later in the day in the dining saloon of Red Funnel's PS
Lorna Doone perhaps on a trip round the Isle of Wight or from Southampton to
Bournemouth and Swanage. The Chief Steward watches observantly,
ever ready for service, as a bow-tied elderly gentleman, with "Bryclreemed" hair
and a bow tie, tucks
into his lunch alongside his younger female companion who is decked out in a rather
smart collar and tie.

A significant reason why the numbers
sitting down to a full meal on the paddlers was small in relation to the
full capacity of the ships was the price. Eating aboard was not
cheap. In this Clyde steamer notice from 1962, breakfast was 5/6,
luncheon 7/6 and high tea 6/-. This compares, on the same leaflet, with only 4/-
for a three hour "Forenoon Cafe Cruise" on the Maid of Skelmorlie
(admittedly not a paddle steamer), 6/6 for a four hour cruise from Millport to
Loch Goil on the Caledonia (which was a paddle steamer) and 13/3 for the
all day "Round of the Lochs and Firth of Clyde" from Largs aboard the Waverley. So
breakfast or high tea was almost as expensive as the full fare for an
afternoon cruise on the Caledonia. And luncheon was more than have the
price of the full day trip. So you had to have money to be able to afford both to
pay for a trip and eat aboard.

As the variety of long distance paddle
steamer trips diminished, particularly after the Second World War, so too did
the range and variety of food offered as well as the number expected to take
advantage of a cooked lunch. For example, by the late 1950s Cosens'
paddle steamer Embassy was still running trips to the Isle of Wight
from Bournemouth but it only took an hour and a half to get there and she did
this is in the morning or the afternoon so the market
for lunches was slim.

In order to try to appear to be more up
to date and attract a different clientele, her saloon
(pictured above) was given a make-over in 1964 with some of the wooden panelling you
can see here replaced by cream painted peg-boarding (don't ask!) and, to better cater for the
evening
Showboat Cruises, the small bar in the background was equipped with the latest
in popular beers: Watneys "Draught Red Barrel" which was then all the rage with
a national TV advertising campaign plugging it with the unforgettable
jingle:

"What's the beer that's always best?

Watneys Draught Red Barrel,

What's the beer that beats the rest?

Watneys Draught Red Barrel,

Drink Red Barrel near or far

In pub or club or any bar,

It's always good wherever you are,

That's Watneys Draught Red Barrel!

In that same era of paddle steamer
decline the Medway Queen
managed to keep the beacon of cooked dinners going as
her trips extended over the lunch period. But the number of diners was on a
slide. And where once big catering departments had pre-prepared extensive menus,
by this stage, just one large joint a day was delivered to the Medway Queen
and of a of a size which could easily be cooked in the galley aboard.

Dinners on the Princess
Elizabeth became a rarity after her sale by Red Funnel into private
ownership in 1959 for service first from Torquay, then Bournemouth and finally
Weymouth, her steamer notices by then advertising only "Refreshment, Teas, Beers & Spirits etc".

As you can see, like on the Embassy,
her saloon (pictured above) had fixed alcove seating arranged around tables as
opposed to the Medway
Queen's long communal tables running fore and aft and the Lorna
Doone's mostly athwartships. One saloon designer thinks one arrangement
is best. Another has a completely different idea. The door in the background
led to the Ladies' Lavatory.

Ironically, just as paddle steamer
operation was going down the pan, a new sort of catering was starting to arrive
on the scene with ready made meals mass produced in factories and distributed
deep frozen or chilled either to newly opening supermarkets for personal
consumption or to commercial food outlets like cafes, restaurants, hotels and
ferries enabling them to serve very large numbers of covers, often cafeteria
style, without the need for any really skilled cooks in the kitchens at all.
Suddenly putting on five hundred (chemical laden it should be said) steak and
kidney pies became easy. Get a semi-trained boy to pull them out of the deep
freeze in the morning ready made as delivered by Brake Bros and bung 'em in the
oven. Job done. Yum yum!

Finally, on this brief excursion
through paddle
steamer food, we can't go home without taking a quick look up and out from the bar of
the most beautiful paddle steamer ever built. Here we are in the forward saloon of
(yes you've guessed it!) the Consul, in a picture taken by Peter Lamb,
with the bar, usually presided over in Consul's later years by the handle-bar
moustachioed Mr George Morris, behind us. Above is the magnificent
Victorian domed skylight with its curved glass windows giving a view upwards towards the bridge. Is that Capt Defrates peering back at us?

OK in her later years the Consul
did not offer the high level and variety of the Majestic's 1914 luncheon
with
its salmon and cucumber, lobster salad, chicken, ham and tongue, roast beef, roast
lamb with mint sauce and pressed beef, potatoes and green peas. But, like the
Majestic, she did
do biscuits, cheese, coffee, tea, wine, bottled beers and spirits.

And, as a final tour de force, when the moon was in
the right phase, the wind in the right direction and the pots full off
Portland Bill with their contents ready to be snapped up at market by the amiable couple
who presided over the Consul's catering, you
could buy a really first rate "Freshly Made Portland Crab Sandwich" in the
aft saloon, a
delectable and longed for treat, the equal in anticipation and taste of
all of the Majestic's finest fare. I'll have another round please.
No, make that two!